


Siren’s Song

by moodiful819



Series: Mermaid AU [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Angst, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Fantasy, How Do I Tag, How do you tag second base with a mershark?, Kakashi is best giant shark puppy man, Mermaids, Mershark Kakashi, Neck Kissing, Pirate Queen Sakura, Pirates, Romance, Sakura can't make small talk to save her life, Sensuality, She also can't draw for shit, Sulky shark puppy, The infamous Mermaid-AU from tumblr, Trauma, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:44:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9217136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodiful819/pseuds/moodiful819
Summary: She prays there is a god listening. She prays a god will give her the strength to deny this. She doubts she will get her wish.





	

There is a traitorous sense of relief that crosses her mind as she watches Shino and Kiba hoist their passenger aboard.

She tries to ignore it. Tries to bury it in the rhythmic creak of the pulley against the weight of its load, but the thought is a beacon in her mind.

_I thought you weren’t going to come._

She doesn’t know why she thought he would not come. Ever since they’d established these weekly grammar lessons months ago, Kakashi has not failed to appear for them. Every week, she finds him poking his head out of the water as he waits patiently to be brought aboard. The fact that he tails the boat religiously is beside the point.

Or at least, he had been. This is the first time she has seen Kakashi in days.

She tries not to look at him. Tries instead to keep her watchful, hawk-like eyes on the retreating backs of Kiba and Shino as they go below deck. Already, she falls into the routine. Can feel the slight giddiness coiling in the pit of her stomach. She tells herself it’s her excitement at being able to teach Kakashi how to write, but she knows in the pit of her gut that it’s a lie. Her excitement stems from the sliver of privacy these meetings give them, but there is something else tangled there with it tonight and she is not sure if she wants Kakashi to know about it when she is so unsure about it herself…

She is alone with him before she even knows it. In the blink of an eye, the deck is empty of life save for the two of them and it is suddenly a one-two punch of dread and nausea that nearly brings her to her knees. But she would have never maintained her position as ship’s captain if she could not keep her cool, and the tide of emotions manifests itself as nothing more than a small squirm of the paper in her hands. The tell is dangerous though. If she were on a battlefield with a keen-eyed foe, it’d be enough for her to be dead in a heartbeat.

Before she can stop herself, her eyes dart towards the mershark’s face—she is in luck. Kakashi has not seen a thing.

In fact, he is not looking at her at all.

At first, she thinks he is lost in thought—maybe even reviewing past lessons since she does quiz him at times—but when she sits down to greet him, his response is the slow glide of his pupils to the corners of his eyes. He tucks into a mute silence and it stuns her. Even in the days he could not speak to her, he always found a way to communicate with her.

It’s lethargy, she tells herself. Maybe he has a cold of some sort.

But when she leans forward to take his temperature, the reaction is instantaneous as he scrambles back from her hand, his tail lashing the water into an angry froth. She stumbles back from the watery onslaught and can only watch as Kakashi tries to curl up even tighter in the far corner of the crate. The water whips over his body as the bubbling swells tries to calm themselves again, but he does not seem to notice—or is at least pretending not to.

She cannot help looking at him without a small grimace of pain. His hands constantly shift positions, one moment crossed over his chest with his hands pinned like prisoners underneath his armpits, the next clenching and flexing with an unbridled energy as if he is unsure what to do with them. But those are the only parts of him that move. Everything else from his far-turned head to the unnatural bend of his tail pressed close to his human half is unnaturally still, and his tail fin droops like a limp sail over the edge. In a way, it is funny to see him like this. Kakashi is a large creature. His torso is long by human standards already, but combined with his tail, he is easily the height of one and a half of her men. The idea of him trying to shrink himself down from such a scale is hilarious…

Or at least it would be if he wasn’t so good at it right now. Despite still being his full-body length, it feels as if he’d fit neatly in her palm. Even the air around him feels as if it is collapsing in and though she knows she shouldn’t be—knows that she knows better than this—she cannot help but stare. Her eyes refuse to move away. Despite how obviously fragile he is looking, despite how obviously small he feels, she cannot tear her eyes away. She fears the minute she does, he will disappear from her forever, and she fears that more than she fears any silence.

So she tries to distract herself. With an ear pointed to Kakashi’s movements at all times, she lets her eyes skim the landscape, but there is little to see. They have long since moved from the sunken wreckage of _The Will of Fire_ and though the water is relatively shallow where they have docked for the night, land is nothing but a distant speck on the horizon. Instead, there are miles and miles of boundless ocean. Above them, a full moon holds watch in the sky while closer to their heads, a solitary lamp swings in time to the beat of the waves in its cradle of rope on the mast.

It’s not long before the moonlight begins to burn her skin though. The silence becomes an oppressive weight on her shoulders. An errant breeze crosses the deck of the boat, but it does nothing to help. It has been unseasonably hot for the past few days, even for the South Seas. Most of her crew has taken to sleeping shirtless, and even she is without her usual captain’s garb, clad only in a light, loose shirt, pants, and her usual pair of boots to combat the heat. The sling on her left shoulder does little to help with the weather though.

Out of all the wounds from that skirmish on the seas that day, the injury to her shoulder is probably the worst. Not due to any lasting carnage—it is merely a bad sprain—but because of the sheer annoyance it brings to her life. It restricts her movement in ways she cannot bear, in addition to trapping heat and being uncomfortable to sleep in, and she cannot wait until it is gone.

She feels it like the glance of a senbon needle off her armor. Peering quickly to her right, she is just in time to catch the last hints of a glance stolen out of the corner of his eye and watches as his features grow stormier. His frown deepens. He is thinking. He wants to ask, she knows, but holds himself back.

She wants to reassure him. It’s worse than it looks, she wants to say. It hadn’t even crossed her mind to talk to him about her shoulder. Her crew knows well enough that it’s just a minor inconvenience to her. Even Naruto does not bother her about it too much (though he still won’t let her steer the ship _just_ yet).

But how can Sakura even bring it up when she can’t even get him to look at her long enough to have a conversation? Not to mention whatever is obviously plaguing his mind.

The answer is she can’t. She refuses to. So she tries a different tact.

Pulling the wooden board they use as a writing surface into her lap, she grabs a sheet of paper and her quill and sets to work immediately. Every now and again, she flickers her eyes to his face, drinking in his features as she traces them with her gaze. She quickly moves through his thick shock of silver hair, the straight bridge of his nose… She lingers once again on his delicate ear-fins, thin as gossamer wings, but she finds her gaze lingering elsewhere too. Try as she might to avoid, her eyes keep returning to study his mouth, to the deep troubled frown that is carved in his face. It is hard to reconcile with the image in her head, hard to believe it is real when the memory of his mouth as a mischievous smile or carrying the ghost of a pout is so much stronger.

She finishes her work on that thought. With a grand flourish of her quill, she sets the feather into the inkpot by the crate and beckons Kakashi over.

“Look,” she tells him, and after a moment’s hesitation, she sees him relent into humoring her. It is the least he can do, he probably tells himself.

But judging by the expression he makes upon seeing her work, he probably regrets it and she watches as his features become perilously still. She doesn’t blame him, though. She knows she’s a terrible artist. It’s why she’s the ship’s captain and not the cartographer.

“It’s us,” she prompts pointing at the two embellished stick figures. On the right is her, discernable by her longer hair and the oblong triangle that is supposed to stand for her sling. On the left, Kakashi is the upper half of a stick person attached to what looks like an exploded sausage. She doesn’t even want to mention the atrocity that is supposed to be his hair or the vacuous looks on their simple line-and-dot faces, but she has put effort into her masterpiece. She’s even taken the time to draw each triangle of his sharp teeth, which she shows him at the end of a pointed finger.

It is supposed to be a distraction from his thoughts. She thinks he will be happy that she has done this picture of them. If not happy, at least amused by her feeble attempts at art. There is no use hiding it; Sakura knows she’s awful at drawing. It’s one weakness out of countless others that she has spent the better part of a decade trying to hide, so it’s rare that she is revealing it to him, let alone making it the target of a joke. Most people who make fun of her have never lived long enough to regret it—but Kakashi is a special case.

She thinks he might have always been.

The thought is short-lived though. Ear-fins splayed in a threatening pose, he slams into the picture with the force of a battering ram. The quill is in his hand. She wonders how he has managed to get ahold of it so fast, but it’s hard to breathe, let alone think as Kakashi drags the pen nib over his image, raking it over and over again with the fury of a madman. The paper is ripping; ink splatters everywhere. Her arms are shaking and she closes her eyes against the onslaught. She can feel the board wobble in her hand, can feel the nib grind down as the grooves etch their way into the board, and she’s amazed that it hasn’t splintered under the pressure of his hand.

Blindly, she reaches forward and it is sheer luck that she manages to catch his wrist the first time. He fights her grip though and rewards her temerity with a splash from his angry tail that soaks through her clothes. She wrestles the quill from his hand and only has a split second to spread her knees apart and pin his lunging hand at his shoulder with her feet.

Her pupils are dilated and her breathing is ragged as she stares at him. “What the _hell_ is wrong with you?” she snaps.

She tracks the movement of his eyes, watching as they dart between her, the desecrated portrait between her legs, and to his left where the ocean lays. As he stares off to the side, he hesitates. She thinks he has half a mind to escape overboard and she has half a mind to stop him when he slowly turns his gaze up towards her and she finds him staring at her with a mixture of emotions that she cannot place and a fear that mirrors her own.

Slowly, he moves his hand to his chest and swallows thickly, his mouth grimacing in pain as he speaks.

His answer hits her like a cannonball to the gut. _“M…Monster…”_ he rasps.

Instantly, she is transported to another late night—one of a countless many. She is trying to teach him how to spell, but Kakashi refuses to cooperate. His interest has latched onto something else and it is not long before he is sunk low in the crate, mouth curved into a broad, affectionate grin as he nips playfully at her fingertips and arms. She can still feel the warm, damp fan of his breath on her hand, the sharp, tantalizing bursts each nip sends up her spine. She wants to be mad, but both of them know it is impossible for her in these moments. Kakashi often takes advantage of that and she has caught him sucking on a digit or two before she takes his toy away from him. One might say that this is dangerous—that he is at the end of the day still predominately shark—but the concern has never entered her head. Only once in their playful teasing has he accidentally drawn blood. He had not guarded his teeth far enough with his lips, and while it was the tiniest of cuts on the side of her finger, Kakashi had been inconsolable for a week. He had even used the same word to describe himself then, and Sakura could not think of why she hadn’t remembered this before.

But she has stayed silent for too long. He has already taken it for her answer and begins to once again pull away into himself.

She scrambles forth. Her hand catches him where she can at his wrist, his shoulder, until it lands on his cheek. She forces him to face her and keeps him there.

“You are _not_ a monster.” She spits the word out like a foul-tasting venom. The idea of Kakashi being a monster is unfathomable. Ludicrous. Sakura has seen monsters, and almost always they resemble her more than they resemble him.

But the incident at _The Will of Fire_ still plagues him. Even now, Kakashi’s eyes are haunted by the shadow of that day, and truth be told, a small part of her is too. They never found Ishiguro’s body, but that is normal. There is rarely evidence of Kakashi’s aid in their battles, but that has also dredged up other uncomfortable questions. Why has she never seen the people he has killed? Does he break their necks? Drown them? Do their bodies simply sink into the depths? What about the ones who have died in more gruesome ways? Do they sink too? Or have they met a grislier end? And how does Kakashi actually feed himself…?

Sakura wants answers and she doesn’t at the same time. She is afraid of opening the Pandora’s box that she knows awaits her there, down in the murky depths of their relationship, and to her discredit, her eyes betray her fear.

The doubt is instantaneous. His ear-fins, once lowered, now flare in agitation and his razor-sharp teeth become bared, but whether it is aimed at her or himself, she doesn’t know. All Sakura does know is that she has only one chance to make things right and she fights the tug of his head, forcing him to stay as she presses close. She knows she is vulnerable in this position. Not just because he could tear her face off if he so chose, but because there is no lying at this distance. They are nose-to-nose, and every thud of her heart, every hitch of her breath is there for him to see.  

Holding him with a measured gaze, she chooses her words carefully. “Kakashi, you aren’t a monster,” she repeats, her words slow and methodical. “You saved my life that day. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you. If it hadn’t been for you, I would be rotting under the waves right now while Naruto ran the ship—you can imagine the kind of disaster that would be,” she jokes and watches as Kakashi’s face crinkles with laughter in spite of himself. It is a joy for her to see, the way his face blooms with light. His lids fall, his brows knit…they’re so close that she can feel the moment his nose wrinkles with laughter as it bumps into hers. It’s such a wonderful feeling, which makes what she is about to do next all the more terrifying.

“Kakashi…what you did scared me, but…You have to understand; your actions may have frightened me, but— _and I swear this on every body of water on this godforsaken planet_ —I have never been afraid of you. Not once. Not with Ishiguro, not even the first time I say you. You have to believe me, Kakashi; I could never be afraid of you. _I—”_

She takes her hand back. Swallows her tongue abruptly. Blood is rushing to her face; she is two seconds away from crying and she hates it. She is supposed to be calm and collected. She is supposed to be the voice of reason, but it’s hard to be reasonable when she’s afraid of losing him like this. The thought of never seeing him again had terrified her—it still terrifies her—and the anxiety of what comes next turns her mouth into a desert. But she knows she cannot decide for him. It is his choice to believe her and she must respect his decision, whatever it may be.

Sakura shuts her eyes against what happens next. If he slips overboard never to be seen again, she does not want to watch him do it.

But the murmur of the water is constantly close at hand, and the scratch of her pen joins it. She opens her eyes and looks down at her drawing, and spots it on the corner of the page written with the final dregs of ink.

_I trust you._

She looks up disbelievingly as he follows up his note with a faint smile, and his eyes are once again impossibly warm. She cannot stand it any longer. No one could. Uncaring of her injury, she launches herself at him and the relief that washes over her feels like absolution.

“Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she whispers, her forehead pressed against his, tears in her eye. She is so happy, she could kiss him. He has no idea what it means for her to hear him say it. Even if she were to explain it to him for centuries, she doubts he would understand.

So instead, she basks in the moment when she catches sight of something out of the corner of her eye.

“Oh, here, let me get that for you,” she says licking her thumb. Kakashi follows her path of movement, curious and confused at her actions when he spots the strange black blotch on his left shoulder. He tilts his head.

“It’s harmless. Just ink,” she explains, “though you did manage to get it everywhere.”

A quick look around tells him just how right she is, and he cringes at the ink that is soaking into the side of the crate and into the deck. He wants to tell her how sorry he is, but the inkpot is empty so he has to settle for a sufficiently cowed look.

“Don’t worry. Ink is cheap enough,” she reassures, “though it’s safe to say we won’t be having our usual lesson tonight.”

It’s a shame, really. She had really been looking forward to it. Privacy aside, Sakura enjoys the progress they make in these lessons. Ever since she summarily banned him from using his voice after finding out what it did to his throat, they had been looking for a new way to communicate. (Not everything could be phrased in a yes-or-no question, after all.) Writing seemed to be the simplest solution. Admittedly, it had been awkward and cumbersome at the start, but Kakashi is a quick study and their conversations on the ship were never fast-paced to begin with. Passing notes suits them just fine, she thinks. Oh well. Another time.

But for now, there are materials to fetch and a Kakashi to return back into the sea. Tucking her hair behind her left ear, Sakura is about to start picking up the things around her when she finds her face caught in Kakashi’s hands. It’s not menacing, but it is discomfiting and distracting. She tries to squirm away, but he only tightens his hold on her, making her cheeks puff out against his thumbs and she is suddenly reminded of a goldfish she saw a while ago. She had been walking in the market when she spotted a vendor with goldfish of all kinds. Some had spongy-looking foreheads while others had long flowing fins, and she paused in her errands to watch their graceful dances in the water. They all looked so elegant…

And then she saw one goldfish with large, fleshy cheeks that had managed to get stuck in between two of the decorative rocks in its enclosure. She had laughed at it then, but now pinned like this, she is sorry she ever did. She never would’ve imagined she would understand the suffering of a goldfish on a deep spiritual level, but there’s always a first time for everything.

The slightest increase in pressure in her jaw brings her back from her thoughts. A reprimand sits poised on her tongue ready to launch when she sees him lick his thumb and she has only a second to prepare before she feels the wetness on her cheek. She instinctively squirms again. The bundle of emotions that springs up is as much a nightmare to detangle as Tenten’s wire kit, and she frowns in annoyance. There were so many other routes he could’ve taken if she had ink on her face; she would’ve been happy to clean it up later instead of feeling like a kitten with its mother.

But the look of focus, of complete and utter concentration on his face feels wrong to disturb, so she quietly silences the urge to struggle free and submits herself to his grooming. Once she does, she finds it is not so bad. His hold on her jaw loosens, moving instead to cup her face and tilt it this way and that as needed. She begins to lose herself in the rhythmic circular motions, the broad sweeps of his thumb on the apple of her cheek. When he does not stop, she idly wonders just how much ink there is on her face before she finds her attention straying to the knit of his brows, his piercing gaze, the way his hair is almost touching hers in this position. She is so absorbed in her study that she only barely registers the finishing swipe of his thumb. She is clean. He will pull away and then she will thank him, she imagines.

But his hand never leaves her face. Instead, it trails the curve of her jaw and his thumb sweeps the bow of her lip with a gentleness that makes her ache.

As he lowers his head towards her, he hesitates multiple times. He gives her multiple opportunities to escape. If she had wanted to, she could have counted them off on her hand—but that is too much work. Too much thinking. Instead she watches him from beneath lowered lids and leans in to seal the gap.

Their first kiss is different from what she expects. At night, in a small corner of her mind, she has mulled it over and wondered what it would be like. She had worried about teeth, about bumping noses, about five million other ways things could have gone wrong or been over-the-top. Instead, it is a quiet, almost mundane affair as they kiss like two shy teenagers behind the barn. It reminds Sakura a lot of her first kiss, except this kiss makes her toes curl and makes her stomach feel whimsically giddy like a head full of wine. It is sweet, it is kind. It is a wonderful first kiss for them.

But pirates aren’t known for their abstemious appetites and Sakura does not want to stop at just one. The plans for how to get more churn away in her head and she almost smiles, proud of herself. Instead, she tilts her head and increases the pressure experimentally, which seems to suit Kakashi just fine because his hand buries in her thick hair and crushes her mouth even closer. The warm tingles are sent flying into other parts of her body. She is practically vibrating with them, and while Kakashi is ever mindful, ever gentle, the pacing is much too slow for her. When he glides his tongue over her lower lip for permission, she deepens the kiss of her own accord. Tastes him instead of the other way around. He tastes like ocean spray and it surprises her, but the flavor is so heady that she doesn’t really care anymore about the surprise and instead moans into his mouth, eager to indulge in more.

Her moan seems to do something to him because she can hear his tail thrash the water in the crate. When his hands begin to shake, she thinks she might have snapped his self-control. Good. Haruno Sakura is no wilting flower. Maybe now they can pick up the pace.

It devolves quickly after that. What has started as a simple kiss soon becomes nothing more than a heated clashing of tongues and teeth. He floods her senses; she can feel him in her lips and in her lungs. She can’t get enough of him, but the need to breathe _just_ manages to edge him out.

Sakura is on the brink of suffocation when she pulls her mouth away from his. Her lips are swollen, her face burns like the surface of the sun. If she wanted to, she could probably light up the whole deck, but Kakashi is impatient to begin again. When he chases after her mouth, she gently pushes him away, sucking deep, heaving breaths into her lungs. No matter. The mershark finds other ways to occupy himself and latches onto whatever bare skin he can find. She feels his kisses like brands pressed into her palms and wrists before moving into the tender flesh of her neck, and this is where he stays, drawn helplessly by her scent.

As he noses her there, she spots those delicate fins that have always entranced her, thin and shining before her eyes. Reaching out, she fingers one shyly, feeling its slickness. It’s sturdier than she had imagined, she thinks to herself and is startled by the buck of Kakashi’s hips hard and sudden against the side of the crate. He groans so deep in his throat that she feels his chest shake against hers, and she watches with a heated gaze as his tail writhes helplessly in the crate, twisting and sliding against the wood in search of relief.

She knows they should keep it quiet. The deck boards are thick, but the opening to go below deck is still ajar. Her crew thinks they’re doing grammar lessons up here, for Kami’s sake, and this decidedly does _not_ sound like a grammar lesson. She can only imagine what anyone still up must be thinking. She can only pray that they don’t come up to investigate the loud slaps of water sprawling across the deck floor—

The feeling of his mouth on her neck is enough to erase those thoughts from her mind though, and she presses him deeper into the juncture where her neck and shoulder meet. The heat of him sears her, makes everything else vanish—vaporized by the single-minded desire that he keep doing that with his tongue.

Their hands roving mindlessly over each other, she is only half-aware of her moans, but when she first feels the tips of his teeth in her skin, her gasp slices through the night. Suddenly her spine feels as if it is made with ice and lava all at once, and she coos shakily. It feels like she has just been struck with lightning. Every bit of her buzzes with pleasure, _and when his teeth sink into her deeper…_

It hits her like the long, tumbling fall of a tsunami wave. The warmth deep in her core bubbles out, winds sinuously through every cell. It lashes her every nerve, blinding her with its force. She swears she can hear a roaring in her ear, but it might just be the blood coursing through her veins, racing across her body like shooting stars burning up behind her eyes. It’s too much at once. She feels like she is going to break, and with a single piercing cry, she slumps breathlessly into his arms.

The sound of feet thumping their way up the wooden stairs snaps her to attention. Adrenaline floods her system, clears her system of her need as it flushes to her fingers and toes. She scrambles to right herself, grabs the loose papers in her fist—

But it only takes a few seconds to get on deck. A throat clears behind her and it makes her heart sink.

For a moment, Sakura just sits there. She doesn’t know what she should do. She knows exactly what kind of picture she makes with her mussed hair and swollen lips. Behind her, Kakashi’s fingers reach for her figure, begging for her to return, but she ignores them. There are other things to concern herself with, like how she will maintain order of her crew after this and if she will still even have a crew to begin with.

Slowly, she turns to meet her maker. As she does, she wonders what she will find in their face. Disgust? Disappointment? A haughty, self-righteous sneer? Her stomach already churns at the thought, and she steels herself for the cruelty that is sure to come.

But it never does. Instead, Iruka maintains his distance and looks up at the sails, to his left, to his right as he speaks. “There’s something you need to see, Captain. Shikamaru says it’s important if we want to survive our next skirmish,” he says seemingly letting his gaze rove over everything except her…

And then she realizes he is doing this on purpose. Gathering up her supplies, she splashes cold water from the tank on her face and quickly runs her fingers through her hair. She draws the opening of her shirt closer together. On her shoulder, she can still feel the dull throb of where Kakashi has bit her, but her hair is long enough to cover where it peeks out of her clothes and she is thankful for that.

She signals that she is finished by clearing her throat. “Alright, Iruka. Lead the way,” she says authoritatively. Catching the look of mild relief on his face, she takes it as a sign that she has cleaned up decently well. Good.

She follows Iruka three paces behind. It’s far enough to give her the space she needs to think and calm herself, but still close enough that he knows she is still there. Her mind races as she walks, dragging her feet. The oldest member of her crew is covering for her and she is grateful for that, but there are so many new developments now that she can barely keep her head from jettisoning off her shoulders.

The deck is woefully short for this kind of thinking though. Before she knows it, she is already at the entryway. Pausing at the mouth of the stairs, she lingers and takes one final look at Kakashi for the night. He is still where she left him, flush against the side of his enclosure, watching her closely. His tail has calmed down now; it does not splash like before—but its movements are unnatural, almost predatory as it sways side to side with the regularity of a metronome. She listens to it knock on the sides. She can pinpoint the exact moment when he shifts his weight because the sound deepens, loses it rhythm for a slow, slicing drag. The rough skin of his tail grinds into the wood, the sound of it long and heavy like the hisses that escape his gills. His hands braced against the edge, she can hear the wood creak under the sound of his harsh breathing, labored and panting as he struggles to regain control of himself. The moon moves behind him. At this angle, she can just barely make out his fogged darkness of his gaze, but she can feel the weight of it clear as day and it is a feeling that both scares her and thrills hers.

His gaze continues to pursue her back as she turns away from him. She can feel it scald her right between her shoulders, a pinpoint of sun in her skin. Sakura can only imagine what will happen the next time they meet. Will he look at her, kind and full of adoration as usual? Or will there be heat in his gaze next time? Will _this_ happen next time too?

As she descends the steps, she thinks about what might have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted. If Iruka hadn’t shown up when he did, how far would they have gone? Sakura has little doubt for her safety. Even after she had pushed Kakashi past his limit, nothing in his touch had signaled an intent to hurt her. The fact that he cares for her is more than obvious, and she smiles at the memory of his gentle hands stroking her face.

But it is not long before she remembers those same hands buried in her hair, demanding, possessive, and wanton. It’s not hard to imagine them stroking other things either. Already, her mouth waters at the ghost of ocean spray still thick on her tongue. _He had been so giving, so eager to please…_

She shivers, a long seizing of nerves that stretches the length of her spine. It’s impossible to miss and Iruka pauses in his stride to look at her questioningly.

“I’m fine. I’m just cold,” she explains, but the lie is too blatant in the face of this sweltering weather and the knowledge that the only thing saving her from embarrassment is her rank runs deep. It does not matter though. She is not thinking of her rank. Her mind is too preoccupied on other things, and her desire is so strong that she feels it rattle her bones. There are no doubts of who or what she wants. It is too obvious to ignore now, but she prays to Kami anyway to give her the strength to try.

She doesn’t know what she’ll do to Kakashi otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Fact: Male sharks have been known to bite the fins and gills of their mates during copulation.


End file.
